Teacher Spotlight: Jose Chavira

It was about the 10th grade when Jose Chavira thought he was going to drop out of school. That was until an English teacher named Ms. Beck at his continuation high school encouraged him in his writing one day.

“I was not a good student at all. I was far from it,” said Chavira, 44. “She told me that she read an essay that I wrote and made a few comments like, ‘You know, Jose, I see a lot of potential in you, and I think if you ever decided to go to college, I think you’re gonna be very successful.’ ”

Her words stirred something inside him. His grades improved, he graduated from high school and attended the University of San Diego.

He kept remembering his English teacher and what her words had meant to him. He was 23, finishing up his degree and delivering pizzas part time. It had been six years since her class, and he was on one of his last deliveries before he was to begin student teaching.

At that house, Ms. Beck answered the door.

“I’m not a super-religious person, but I know God sent me to deliver pizza to Ms. Beck to say, ‘Thank you.’ And I did,” he said.

He told her that what she had said that day had meant so much to him that he was completing college and beginning his teaching career the very next week. He was crying and she was crying, and they hugged.

“Then her husband came out and that was a little awkward,” Chavira said with a chuckle. “But I did finally say ‘thank you’ to this wonderful person, so I hope that I’m the kind of teacher who encourages and makes a positive difference in a kid’s life.”

Chavira is a second-grade instructor at Mendoza Elementary School in Nestor, where he has been teaching since 2000. A teacher for 19 years, he’s the school’s teacher of the year and a recent finalist for San Diego County Teacher of the Year.

He says it’s important that students know he cares because there’s this sort of unspoken message that if teachers don’t care, the students figure they don’t need to care about learning.

“I see them not as a classroom full of faces, but as individuals,” Chavira said.